Views » January 18, 2012

It’s More Than a War of Words

Conservatives rely on focus-group-tested talking points because they know that only a deceived and distracted populace—an infantilized 99%—will ever tolerate their regressive agenda.

You may recall, during the Bush reign, pollster and focus-group maven Frank Luntz invented “climate change,” the linguistically neutered–and for the oil industry the politically preferable–term for “global warming.”

Luntz is a smoke vendor. In Marxist jargon he is in the business of generating “false consciousness.” His mission: Obscure the fault lines in American society, and distract attention from the structures of wealth and power.

Conservatives rely on focus-group-tested talking points because they know that only a deceived and distracted populace–an infantilized 99%–will ever tolerate their regressive agenda.

The Right fears that if facts begin to matter, the obfuscations of focus-group-driven pollsters will be exposed for what they are: lies–or “misstatements of fact,” as President Ronald Reagan’s handlers called his prevarications during the Iran-Contra Scandal.

Addressing the Republican Governors Association meeting in Florida in November, Luntz said, “I’m so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I’m frightened to death. They’re having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism.”

So what do you do when you meet a supporter of the Occupy movement? You co-opt them. “First off,” says Luntz, “here are three words for you all: ‘I get it.’ ” Second, “You talk about how ‘we’re all in this together. We either succeed together or we fail together.’ “

Luntz is “right,” says Berkeley linguist George Lakoff, writing on the Huffington Post: “We’re all in this together. But that is the opposite of conservative morality. It is the progressive view of a moral democracy that all of Luntz’s conservative framings contradict. It is an attempt at co-opting the progressive moral system, because the Occupy movement is showing that it has an idea of democracy that makes sense to most Americans.” According to Lakoff, Luntz’s goal is “to take Obama’s strongest moral appeal away from him.”

But these days, when it comes to “moral appeal” the Democratic Party is already in trouble.

Democracy Corps, a Democratic polling outfit in D.C., coined the term “Rising American Electorate” to describe a group that comprises 53 percent of the nation’s eligible voting population – Hispanics, African-Americans, unmarried women and young people age 18 to 29. These growing voting blocs supported Democrats by large margins in 2008, but they stayed home in 2010, which helps explain how the GOP captured the House that year.

Democracy Corps reports that its polling has found “these progressive voters are very frustrated with the lack of change. … [T]hey need to hear that the … programs and protections they need and value … are not just politicians’ bargaining chips. …[T]hey need progressive leaders to get passionate again. This is what brought non-voters to the polls in November 2008.”

The 2010 midterms did represent a failure of progressive political organization and engagement, a failure we must not repeat. That unfortunate election cycle ceded important ground to the Tea Party and the Right.

But anxious Democratic politicians can’t simply scold progressives into turning out on Election Day. If Democrats fail to inspire voters – if they fail to stake out positions that energize and mobilize their skeptical base – Obama will be a one-term president, the Democratic Party will ride his coattails into political exile and the Austerians will win.

For me Obama is a good president. It is not the best for sure, but he is honest and I like this thing.
mold inspectionPosted by ronald donovan on 2012-03-13 10:51:06

I find it interesting so many on the left are having a difficult time applying their Marxist class analysis to Obama and are in denial that he has a Wall Street agenda he is not going to deviate from.
That Obama, like Mussolini, is a master of using left-wing rhetoric to disguise his Wall Street agenda of wars abroad paid for with austerity measures here at home I guess is too confusing for the muddle-headed middle-class intellectuals so docilely trying to give this Wall Street charlatan a progressive cover as they turn from Marxism to the imperialists' ideology of pragmatism which they share with Obama.
Apparently all this Soros funding of foundations they get their pay-checks from is taking its toll on the more weak-minded and those without the courage or back-bone to stand up to this imperialist warmonger.
Come on; let's have an answer to this most basic and fundamental question:
How is Barack Obama's Wall Street war economy working for you? Posted by alanmaki on 2012-01-27 11:52:34

Buy more ammunition and beer, boy. It's gonna be a long four years in your bunker.
When you come out those white sheets will be out of style.
Posted by Leslie Victor Piper on 2012-01-27 09:46:53

Why would any working person vote for Obama?
All you have to do is ask people the most essential and basic question:
How is Barack Obama's Wall Street war economy working for you?
The Democrats should dump Obama. Posted by alanmaki on 2012-01-27 00:32:16

Luntz and Gingrich may have studied NLP from the same teachers, who knows? But the skills are available to anyone who wants to make the effort to learn them. How you use them,whether to free and empower the 99% or to enslave them, and Gingrich and Luntz have done, on the behalf of the the 1%, is always the same: do you go over to the dark side, once you know how to herd humans and turn them into domestic animals to be 'sold' to the Kochs and their ilk? Or do you aim to enlighten and lead?
So far history tells us that Gingrich and Luntz are on the side of the winners...we know what happened to Jesus and Socrates, Confuscius and Tom Paine...the slavers and reactionaries shot Lincoln too, remember?
Thom Hartmann is doing the good work, and there are a few others. What democrats, with a little 'd', lack, is enough skillful practitioners of influential English... most of us have stopped reading and have abandoned the language to the paid hacks of Koch's dozens of hired craptanks of propagandists...sorry...I can get mean too, and I mean it.
Know what I mean?Posted by Leslie Victor Piper on 2012-01-20 19:47:42